The Herobrine File
by Tontainus
Summary: A File I have compiled about Herobrine...


Herobrine is the subject of a community-made "creepy-

pasta" (creepy story). He is one of the major community

icons of Minecraft. Herobrine has not been present in

any version of Minecraft. "Canon" of Herobrine is widely regarded as the first

image/story ever posted about Herobrine, as well as

the Brocraft stream. Anything posted after these two

events are considered as fanmade

adaptions/variations.

Herobrine is not in Minecraft. There are no references to him at all in the source

code, and there is no code to allow for any entity to act

like Herobrine. There is no level terrain code to

generate redstone torches, 2x2 tunnels or elaborate

dungeons with traps. There is no possible way Herobrine can ever exist in

any unmodded clients or servers. Any claims that he is

in Minecraft are completely false. Any appearances he

may have are caused by mods being installed. All signs of Herobrine, like trees with no leaves,

random glowstone towers, suspicious messages on

signs, etc. are either glitches, formatted naturally, or

placed by another player to mislead you. The Minecraft Wiki and Forums do not partake in any

viral Herobrine hoax. Any deletion of Herobrine-

related comments or stories are purely because

Herobrine does not exist, and the stories are either

fictional, with an intent to mislead others, or the result

of users playing mods installed on their game without

their knowledge.

From the original creepy-pasta, Herobrine creates

random constructions, such as sand pyramids in

oceans and long 2×2 tunnels. He also cuts off all the

leaves from trees. Herobrine first appeared in a single image detailing

an encounter. It was posted on the 4chan's /v/ board,

and gained very little attention. It stated how

Herobrine had appeared in someone's single-player

game, littering the map with various pyramids and

tunnels. It is the first media to name him as Herobrine. It was only later that Herobrine grew in popularity,

when the Brocraft streamer "Copeland" photoshopped

Herobrine into several screenshots to show to his chat.

He had recently taken a liking to the story, and wished

to be a part of it. After getting largely good reactions,

he decided to stage a hoax. He has explained exactly

how that took place in an email.[1] Copeland had played through the world as a normal

lets-player would, deliberately avoiding the work-in-

progress room he had set up for the hoax. Herobrine

was introduced to the stream here (at 20:45). He is

confirmed to be a retextured painting. Copeland then

screamed and ran out of the room, promptly ending the

stream. Copeland pretended to be shaken up in the chat, and

later posted a message onto the forums, linking to the

video to spread it around, in the hope to get similar

reactions. After a while, Copeland removed the painting and

reverted to normal textures. He proceeded to stream

further, pretending to be scared. He announced that he

would delete the world to never meet Herobrine again. Later on, Patimuss made a video showing Herobrine in

a user-made lava field. This Herobrine was free-

standing, unlike the previous video. Due to this, it is

likely he was a retextured door. The livestream went

down after Patimuss ran away and saved his game,

only to resume ten minutes later, where Herobrine had

disappeared. Later on, during the second stream, Patimuss can be

heard talking to his wife, stating he was trolling. This

flooded the livestream chat with outrage. He then

faked a game crash. Copeland disliked that Patimuss

outed Herobrine as a fake. It is unknown when exactly it happened in relation to

Patimuss's video, but Copeland then posted links in

chat, leading to .

This is likely where the nickname "Him" originated from.

The page features Steve's face, but with real, frantically

rolling eyes in the place of his block eyes, modified to

be completely black. Below the face, there are a jumble of characters and

letters. after removing all non-alphabet characters, the

following message is revealed:

" It has been reported that some victims of torture,

during the act, would retreat into a fantasy world from

which they could not WAKE UP. In this catatonic state,

the victim lived in a world just like their normal one,

except they weren't being tortured. The only way that

they realized they needed to WAKE UP was a note they

found in their fantasy world. It would tell them about

their condition, and tell them to WAKE UP. Even then,

it would often take months until they were ready to

discard their fantasy world and PLEASE WAKE UP. „

The message keeps telling the viewer to "wake up",

implying they're living in a fantasy world, and this text

hidden in the page is their "note". The above text is from

another creepypasta, entitled "Wake Up". The stream proceeded later with no further Herobrine

sightings. Copeland continued to adamantly state

Herobrine was real for about a year onwards. The wiki

asked Copeland several questions regarding the event,

which are located here. Since the stream, there has been a huge increase in his

popularity, propelling Herobrine to meme status, and

making him an icon of the community. There are

several mods, animations, pieces of artwork and

constructions of Herobrine that have been created.

Herobrine has two distinct pronunciations, suspected

to be because of pronunciation differences between

America and Europe. It is speculated that most Europeans would pronounce

the word as "hero brine", brine being salt-saturated

water. While it is speculated that most Americans would

pronounce the name as "Hiro brin". Both e's are

pronounced differently, with the first e being

pronounced as an i, and the last e being silent. The "European" version is seen as canon, mainly

because the Brocraft team pronounced him as such in

their livestream, and because Herobrine himself,

canonically, is Swedish. Further study into what specifically has caused these

pronunciation differences is in progress.

What Herobrine is Canonical Herobrine is Notch's dead brother, somehow

embedded into Minecraft. While this is the "canon", this

is also completely false in reality, as Notch has no

brother. Ghost aside, there are two plausible canon theories

remaining. Herobrine shows a lot of characteristics of being a

form of virus, such as manipulating game worlds,

deleting threads and sending messages through the

Minecraft Forums. Perhaps also hacking into Notch's

email and Twitter to reply on his own existence. Or,

Herobrine is simply a figment of the users imagination.

All users the user talked to, including Notch's email

reply, could simply be the creation of the player's mind.

This would also explain Notch's rejection of the canon,

as showing the story is all in the user's head. Herobrine is near-certainly inspired by Slenderman,

who is also the inspiration behind Endermen. Community The most popular theories among users is that

Herobrine is a ghost. Other theories can involve him

being a higher being, a demon, a bad omen, or the

suggestions in the canonical explanation. However,

most of these are written as if Minecraft itself is reality,

rather than from the player controlling the avatar

within the game. Herobrine canonically has not

appeared in real life, and remains confined to

technology.

Appearance Canonical Herobrine is a human entity, with the exact same skin

as "Steve". However Herobrine has bright white eyes that

glow in the darkness, as if they are a light source. Community Herobrine can sometimes be seen holding tools, such

as pickaxes. This stems from the widespread community

belief that Herobrine was a miner. Usually, his hands

are empty. Herobrine is often portrayed by the community as a

dead miner, killed long before the player's arrival. His

appearance, however, does not suggest either of these

are the case. But with Minecraft's abandoned

mineshafts and strongholds, as well as mining being a

large part of the game, the game itself has shaped

public perception of the character to suit this persona. Movement Canonical Herobrine is said to have the ability to run in

Minecraft. This is indicated by the original source. The

Brocraft stream portrays him as almost always stood

up straight, with arms to his sides, watching the player.

He is not seen to physically move within the Brocraft

stream, but he moves location during the stream. It is

unknown if Herobrine can swim, use minecarts, boats

or Nether portals. Like most ghosts, it is likely he

simply has no use for most methods of transportation.

Community Much like angered Endermen, Herobrine is widely

believed to move via teleportation. Nearly all of the

community actually reject the canon, describing him as

running. Herobrine cannot fly, and no variation states this as

"canonical". However, he appears to be able to glide.

Which is to say, moving in directions without

physically moving, while not moving upwards. This is

usually evident in retreating back into fog. Herobrine is often portrayed with his head crooked or

twitching. This is likely due to him being seen moreso

as a virus/creepy entity in Minecraft, rather than a

ghost. Interaction within Minecraft Canonical Herobrine is able to build and destroy in Minecraft.

The original image states the player found long 2x2

tunnels, small pyramids in the middle of the ocean and

trees with no leaves. The full extent of Herobrine's

building capacity is unknown, but the given examples

indicate Herobrine has awareness of shape, and can

differentiate materials from each other. Herobrine seems to solely target human players. He did

not seem to interact with any other mobs nearby in the

Brocraft stream, some of which were spiders and

zombies. His canonical relation to further mobs added

since he appeared is a complete mystery. His

interactions with other mobs is not mentioned in the

original image. While there is a chicken present in the

image, Herobrine does not seem interested in it at all,

and is solely focused on the player. Community Herobrine has, on occasion, interacted with other

mobs. He is sometimes able to take control of passive

animals, and revive/spawn undead mobs. Herobrine seems able to drastically change his

environments with no viable source of resources to do

so. Most expansions to his abilities involves

cobblestone placing, dungeon building, using

redstone torches and setting traps. He exhibits all the

symptoms of a Creative player in the game. Herobrine seems unable to enter the Nether, or the

End.

Variations Herobrine's intentions vary, but they usually fall under

two categories. One variation is based on pure

community interpritation, while the other, based on the

canon. Canonical In the Stalker variation, he stalks the player,

disappearing if approached. This variation is derived

from his origins. Community In the Vengeful variation, he tries to ensnare the

player in traps, presumably to steal their items. He

waits for people to enter his dungeons, then either

seals them inside, or teleports behind them, presumably

killing them. Some rarer variations of this particular

version says he breaks the player's creations, and

steals their items from chests. This variation is likely

inspired by griefers and trolls. Future update Notch posted on Twitter about the subject of

Herobrine, early in his popularity boost.

RavenBurga Is "he" a real entity ingame or is it just a

successful_ ?

Notch It's not real. =) But it might be soon!

This confirmed there was no Herobrine, but suggested

Notch planned to add him at a later date. At MineCon 2010, Notch confirmed Herobrine will be

in the game, probably in a "seecret friday update". Due to increased drama surrounding the Herobrine

page, a wiki administrator asked Notch over IRC if

Herobrine would be added:

12:25 Kizzycocoa [...] is there any confirmation on his

upcoming existence in MC?

12:27 Notch i have no plans of adding herobrine as is,

but I do like the rumors, haha

This shows Notch has decided against adding

Herobrine. However, the fact that "as is" suggested that

something like Herobrine may be added, fuelling

beliefs he will be added even further. So, once again,

the same user asked for clarification:

8:09 AM Oct 20th Kizzycocoa [...] the entire

community is getting frustrated by the hero-spam

8:56 AM Oct 20th Notch i have no plans of adding

herobrine.[2]

Current stance on Herobrine As Minecraft passed on from Notch to Jeb, the chance

of Herobrine appearing in an update was unclear. On

the 22nd of August, Dinnerbone, current joint

developer of Minecraft, tweeted:

" We have no plans at all to add herobrine. I doubt this

will ever change. „

~ Dinnerbone on Herobrine[3]

This confirms that Herobrine will never see an official

release in Minecraft, and that any claims of "finding"

Herobrine in vanilla Minecraft in future updates are

completely unfounded.

Cameos Mojang media appearances

Herobrine in the Wedding Weekend promo image

Herobrine in the Minecon header

Herobrine on the Minecon Xbox stand

Herobrine in Mojang's "summer picnic" Facebook cover

photo

The Herobrine statue from Minecon, now owned by

Zaralith

Herobrine in the LEGO Microword booklet. Herobrine has appeared in official Mojang images as

an in-joke. His first appearance in official Mojang images started

with the Wedding Weekend, in which he was just

behind Notch's Minecraft character. His second

appearance was in the Minecon header, where, yet

again, Herobrine was just behind Notch. Herobrine also appeared in the the official Minecon

trailer, created by Hatfilms, at 3:11. However, as users

were asked to submit their skins to appear in the

trailer, this is likely not intentional. Herobrine was also spotted at the Xbox section of

Minecon. He was on the board, behind the Xbox

stations. During Minecon's closing, a user named

Zaralith won the Herobrine statue by answering the

give-away question "How many Fable games are there?"

correctly. Some users point to this as proof of his future addition.

However, there is no proof he is being portrayed for

anything other than baiting fans. Herobrine also appeared in Minecraft's Facebook

page, the image being the Cover Photo. It is notable to

state the image was created by the fan for a

competition, with the theme of "summer picnic", hence

his inclusion may not be fully intentional. Changelogs Herobrine was first stated to have been removed in

Beta 1.6.6. This was a joke, referring to Notch partially

removing the human mob's essential code, making it

unspawnable within Minecraft. An ulterior motive was

to troll the community, as this was around the time

Herobrine had gained mematic status within the

community. Below is a table showing every version Herobrine has

been "removed" in to-date.

Version Reason

Beta 1.6.6 Removal of essential Human code, as well as to toy

with the community.

Beta 1.7 No reasons for the entry/Toying with the community.

Beta 1.7_01 No reasons for the entry/Toying with the community.

Beta 1.8 (Adventure Update) No reasons for the entry/Toying with the community.

1.0 (Full Release) No reasons for the entry/Toying with the community.

1.2 No reasons for the entry/Toying with the community.

Only noted on the Tumblr version of the changelog,

viewed through the launcher.

1.2.5 Removal of all "ghost entities". Changelog entry read:

"Removed all ghost entities under the command of Lord

Herobrine".

1.3.1 No reasons for the entry/Toying with the community.

1.4.2 No reasons for the entry/Toying with the community.

Only noted on the Tumblr version of the changelog,

viewed through the launcher.

1.5 Pre-release No reasons for the entry/Toying with the community.

1.5 No reasons for the entry/Toying with the community.

1.6 Pre-release No reasons for the entry/Toying with the community.

1.6.1 No reasons for the entry/Toying with the community.

Only noted on the Tumblr version of the changelog,

viewed through the launcher.

1.7.2 No reasons for the entry/Toying with the community.

Only noted on the Tumblr version of the changelog,

viewed through the launcher.

Herobrine has not been "removed" in any snapshot

version to date.

Herobrine has not been "removed" in any snapshot

version to date. Xbox changelogs In the July Xbox update, Herobrine was removed from

the Xbox version of Minecraft for the first time. It is very

likely that 4J Studios, the developers behind the Xbox

version, will continue this long-running inside joke. Xbox 360 On the Xbox 360, Herobrine is mentioned on one of the

splash messages.[4] Herobrine is part of a skin pack, released on the Xbox

360.[Screenshot needed] Because of this skin addition, "sightings" have risen

drastically. However, all Herobrines on the Xbox are

simply players, using the Herobrine skin. Herobrine

then made another appearance in the 3rd skin pack for

the Xbox version, where a "Zombie Herobrine" skin is

available. Scrolls In the latest up date for the game Scrolls, 0.103.0,

Herobrine being removed was in the change log

miscellaneous section.

Mojang reactions Mojang has, albeit rarely, shared their views on

Herobrine. Notch

" The Herobrine stuff is awesome and kind of scary at the

same time. It really shows how little control a content

producer has over the content. I've publicly told people there's never been any such

thing as Herobrine, and that I don't have any dead

brothers, and that letting too many animals die in lava

is a fool proof way to summon him but that you don't

need to be afraid of him. He only means well, he's

looking out for you, trying to warn you of the dangers

you can't see. There certainly are NO physical

manifestations of Herobrine that will sneak out of your

computer if you leave Minecraft running at night,

looming over you as you sleep with his pale eyes

inches away from your face, as he tries to shout at you

to wake up. Sometimes you wake up with a jolt, and

he's gone, and all that lingers is the memory and faint

echo of his wordless screaming. Of course it was just a

dream. There's no way a morally dubious ghost with a

god complex could at any point decide to haunt the

children who play my game "for their own good", as

there is NO SUCH THING. etc etc „

~ Notch on Herobrine[6]

" Getting loads of tweets and emails about Herobrine

again. I don't have a dead brother, and he never was in

the game. Not real. Never was. „

~ Notch on Herobrine[7]

Ezchili

" It was fun to see the brocraft stream with herobrine

back in the day, was well done. But then it's been

overused & worn out. „

~ Ezchili on Herobrine[8] Kappische

" Ok ok. To be honest, there has never existed a

Herobrine. It was just a rumor started by some douche

and then someone probably created a mod. „

~ Kappische on Herobrine[9]

When asked if he would like to update his stance,

Kappische replied:

" yes..but he is watching me! „

~ Kappische on Herobrine[10]

Mollstam

" Herobrine has, and always will be, our friend. „

~ Mollstam on Herobrine[11]

JahKob

" He has never existed.. Quote me if you want.. „

~ JahKob on Herobrine[12]

Carnalizer

" I don't always have an opinion about Herobrine, but

when I do, it tends to end up on a wiki. „

~ Carnalizer on Herobrine[13]

" I don't have an opinion. „

~ Carnalizer on Herobrine[14]

EvilSeph

" I can't comment on that, he might be watching... „

~ EvilSeph on Herobrine (Via IRC)

Note: Minecraft Wiki is looking for more responses

from Mojangsters that have not already been quoted.

Please post links to these on the talk page. Trivia •When asked about audio player implementation in

the wiki, and limits of what could be uploaded, C418

replied to Herobrine claims relating to disc 11. He

stated that he cannot say a lot about 11, but that it is

not anything to do with Herobrine. •There is a user called Herobrine registered on the

Minecraft servers. The account is a full account

(meaning they have bought Minecraft after

registering). The owner of the account is unknown.

They have not visited either Minecon using the

Herobrine username, due to their lack of a cloak

texture.

See also •First Herobrine thread on Minecraft Forums:

(archive) (original) Herobrine livestream reference The Herobrine livesteam was located here. Regrettably,

it was deleted. We are unable to locate any existing

copy or recording of the stream. Copeland and the Brocraft founder have both stated

that they do not have a backup copy of this stream. We

are reaching out to any users who may have recorded

this stream for personal use, to share the footage for

future generations of Minecraft fans.


End file.
